In April, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared before both House and Senate committees to answer questions about this scandal as well as other issues such as privacy breaches, security flaws and the unsubstantiated claim that Facebook discriminates against conservatives.

One of the biggest stories of the year was Facebook’s fall from grace. The company is still strong, but its reputation has been tarnished. It started in 2017 after revelations that Facebook was duped into inadvertently helping Russia influence the 2016 election.

In March, word got out that Cambridge Analytica, a now-defunct British political consulting firm, harvested data from 87 million Facebook users to benefit the Trump presidential campaign.

In April, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared before both House and Senate committees to answer questions about this scandal as well as other issues such as privacy breaches, security flaws and the unsubstantiated claim that Facebook discriminates against conservatives.

Later in the year, Facebook faced more criticism and scandals including reportedly hiring a public relations firm to discredit liberal financier George Soros, prompting criticism from the left as well as the right. Soros, a Jewish holocaust survivor, has been the subject of numerous unrelated conspiracy theories and anti-Semitic attacks.

In June, the New York Times reported that Facebook had data-sharing partnerships with at least four Chinese companies, including Huawei, which has been flagged by U.S. intelligence agencies as a potential security threat. In December, the Times alleged that Facebook had “more intrusive access to users’ personal data than it has disclosed,” sharing data with the likes of Microsoft, Amazon, Netflix and Spotify.

In a statement, Facebook denied the allegations, but all of these revelations sparked a renewed “delete Facebook movement” with some prominent defectors including former Wall Street journalist Walt Mossberg, who recently took to Facebook to say that he’s deleting his Facebook, Messenger and Instagram accounts “because my own values and the policies and actions of Facebook have diverged to the point where I’m no longer comfortable here.”

Google

Google celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2018, but it, too, had a rough year. There was the revelation of a $90 million payout to a former executive who had been credibly accused of sexual harassment, which prompted 20,000 of its employees to walk out for a day.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai went to Washington in December for a grilling by the House Judiciary Committee, including claims by Republicans that liberal employees were introducing anti-conservative bias in its algorithms and search results, a charge that Pichai denied.

Pichai was also called upon to defend his company’s data collection policies, including its use of location data. There were also questions about Google’s possible project to create a censored search engine in China. Pichai acknowledged that the company had explored such plans but said that there are no current plans to launch such a product.

Tesla

In August, Tesla founder CEO Elon Musk announced that he was going to take the company “private” at $420 a share with “secured funding.”

There was no funding and the SEC didn’t think it was funny. Musk was forced to resign as chairman, though he is still CEO. And in a November interview with Axios, Musk admitted that the company was “within single-digit weeks,” of death due largely to its inability to build enough of its new Model 3s to bring in necessary revenue.

Tesla upped its production and is now building as many as a thousand cars a day, and just days ahead of New Year’s Eve, promised to deliver cars ordered this week to buyers by Monday (in time for the full $7,500 federal tax rebate) or make-up the $3,750 between the full rebate and what buyers will get if they take delivery after December 31.

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He also said that the long-promised “$35,000” model is about a half a year away, although Tesla did release a 260-mile range model starting at $46,000, down $3,000 from the discontinued version that could go 310 miles between charges. Tesla still has a 310-mile-range car, but it comes with all-wheel drive and starts at $53,000.

Products

There were of course lots of tech products introduced in 2018. The Apple Watch 4 is significant mostly because of its health implications. It can detect if the user falls and can call for help if necessary, but that feature can be accidentally activated by dropping or shaking the watch. It can also take the user’s electrocardiogram and measure atrial fibrillation, but — as I discovered — it can cause unnecessary anxiety for some users. It’s not quite a smartwatch, but Fitbit’s Charge 3, introduced this year, does many of the same tasks for less than half the price and has a five-day battery.

Apple also introduced two new iPhones including the $749 iPhone XR, which provides most of the benefits of its new and more expensive iPhone XS for $350 less. Google and Samsung also introduced their flagship phones — the highly rated Google Pixel 3 (and larger XL version) and the Samsung S9 with its beautiful screen. All three companies upped the game with their phone cameras, virtually eliminating the need for anyone other than very serious photographers to carry around a dedicated digital camera.

Apple finally updated its popular 13-inch MacBook Air with significant design changes, a higher resolution “Retina” display, a new keyboard and less weight. Dell, HP, Lenovo and other PC makers continued their march toward lighter and better laptops, many, like the MacBook Air, weighing 2.75 pounds or less.

Smart speakers did very well this year. Both Amazon and Google released newer and better versions of their offerings, and in February, Apple finally introduced its HomePod, which at $349, hasn’t done as well as its competitors. Amazon’s newest third-generation Echo Dot (on sale during the holidays for $29.99) was one of Amazon’s best selling products in December.

Amazon also said that it had record sales this holiday season and shipped more than a billion free packages for Prime users. But all that holiday consumerism makes no sense when you consider that the title of its No. 1 requested song this year was Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You.”